


Carlos has a bad time

by PorcelainAlice



Category: Descendants (Disney Movies)
Genre: Carlos-centric, Dragon!Mal, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Power Imbalance, Xeno!Mal, idk if Poly!Rotten four or just super comfortable with each other rotten four
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-18
Updated: 2020-04-18
Packaged: 2021-02-23 11:20:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,334
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23710690
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PorcelainAlice/pseuds/PorcelainAlice
Summary: This is not a fic. At least, not a proper one. But I have so many little scenes and snippets lying around that I don't quite have a full story for, and it seems a shame to just leave them to rot in my docs, so I decided to give this a try!I'll post the scenes with a note about the vague ideas I had while writing them, and you guys can tell me if you think you'd be interested in a full fic, and if so, what you think should happen! Like. Crowdsourcing a fanfic.This might be a really stupid idea but hey what have I got to lose?
Relationships: Implied Mal/Carlos de vil
Comments: 7
Kudos: 28





	Carlos has a bad time

Mal climbs into the limo looking angrier than Carlos has ever seen her. 

Her eyes are glowing, casting jagged, sickly green lights over her cheekbones and eyelashes, bright enough to be visible even in the sunlight, but that’s nothing new, he’s seen that before. Her pupils have warped into reptilian slits, slicing through irises like green embers, and that’s rarer, but he’s still seen it a few times.

Carlos had thought that was as far as she could go. Mal’s body produces magic just by existing, but it all fizzes out in her veins because of the barrier. She can't build up enough to shift form. At least, he thought she couldn't.

But her mouth is twisted into an angry snarl, stretched too-wide across her face, like her whole jaw might unhinge at any second. Her lips are peeled back enough to see that her teeth have gone sharp and thin, a maw full of carnivore fangs. There’s a weirdness to the skin on her cheekbones and the bridge of her nose that might be the closest she can get to scales on the isle. 

She’s growling, low and feral and dangerous in her chest, somewhere between far-off thunder and dubstep insect noises, like one of Diego’s weirder mixes. When she reaches for him, he sees that her nails are gone, and her fingers are stretched out weirdly long, capped with claws about half the length of his thumb. Actual claws, not fingernails-filed-to-points like Evie does, but curled talons sprouting from the blunt ends of her too-long fingers.

Mal lays the backs of those fingers against his cheek, so gently Carlos can barely feel it, her claws turned carefully away from his skin. With a pathetic, shaking little sigh, he lets his eyes slip closed.

“I’m gonna kill her,” Mal snarls, her voice weird and lispy-thick around growl and fang. “I’m gonna peel the flesh off her body, break all her bones, I’ll fucking _shred_ her _piece by piece_ , she’ll die _screaming--”_

Carlos makes a broken little whimper and immediately hates himself for it. Evil, he’s so _weak_.

It isn't even a scared sound, really. What could he possibly even have to be scared of right now? With Jay on one side, all coiled tight and trembling with rage like a snake, ready to lash out at the first sign of a threat, and Evie on the other, smiling for him but her eyes like ice, a hand resting on the dagger under her skirt, all of two seconds away from slitting the nearest throat. Mal in front of him, so cruel and vicious and gentle and protective. She’ll probably mutilate anyone who comes near him right now, paint the interior of the limo red as a warning for anyone who touches what’s hers. Mal is angry enough to take on the whole isle right now, Carlos is safer than he’s ever been.

But there has already been so much violence and pain today. Somebody already got mutilated, there were already screams, and Carlos is just… Tired. He’s so, so tired.

Mal makes a weird noise too inhuman for him to interpret, then sighs. Her other hand comes up to pet through his curls, her claws so gentle over his scalp that they don't even hurt. The rattling growl in her chest settles down bit by bit, like she’s swallowing it. “Carlos,” she murmurs, when the sound has faded, her hands cupping his face and pulling him forward. “Little one, come here.”

Blindly, gratefully, Carlos follows.

The worn leather of her jacket is smooth against his face as he nuzzles into her chest, breathing in the smell of that leather, and of paint and smoke and earth and green, living things. Mal’s body is even hotter than it usually is, warm enough Carlos shivers with the contrast of her against the front of him and cold air at his back. _Dragon fire_ , Carlos thinks. The last of his tension bleeds itself away like melting ice. In its absence he’s left weak and shaking and clinging to her. 

Warm, calloused palms slide over his back and arms, and dainty, soft hands find his hair and shoulders, and Mal holds him close and makes quiet rumbling sounds. Carlos isn't gonna cry about this. He isn't, he’s had worse, it’s barely even bleeding anymore. He’s just really fucking tired and today has _sucked_ and he just needs a minute to get himself together, okay? He just needs…

Evie presses a kiss to the back of his neck and Jay speaks Arabic too softly for Carlos to make out the words and Mal purrs low and soothing for him, and Carlos burrows deeper against Mal’s chest to muffle his whimpers and lets them hold him until the shaking stops.

* * *

Carlos leaves the bathroom on autopilot, shuffling back out into the dorm he and Jay share while halfhazardly tying a towel around his waist. Jay is still sitting on the floor where Carlos left him, but he isn't staring blankly into space anymore. He has his head tilted back against Evie’s knee, letting her hands in his hair comfort him. He turns his head to look when Carlos walks into the room, then closes his eyes with a sigh and goes still again.

Before he can figure out how to respond to that, Carlos is distracted by Mal. She must have arrived while he was in the shower. He opens his mouth to say--something. An apology, or a plea, or… But Mal stops him with a shake of her head. She doesn’t say a word as she reaches for him, so Carlos holds still and waits for whatever (rightly deserved) punishment she has in store.

Mal’s hands find his elbows and squeeze once, before stroking down his forearms to where his hands are fisted in his towel, clutching it to his hips. She pries his fingers away from the cloth. Carlos winces at the ache in his muscles as his hands untense. Awkwardly, he lowers his hands to his sides, opening and closing them while Mal pulls his towel off of him. 

He wants to ask her what she’s doing, but it isn’t his place and whatever it is he deserves it, and Mal told him to be quiet, so he bites his tongue until that hurts, too, the ache in his hands and mouth.

Mal gathers his towel in her hands and tilts his chin up, running a corner of it over his cheeks and nose and forehead, gathering the water that dripped from his hair. She dries that next, infinitely gentler and more thorough than he had been when he’d done it himself, patting at his curls until they’re springy and no longer dripping. 

Still clenching and unclenching his hands, Carlos closes his eyes.

The towels in Auradon are so weirdly soft and fluffy, and Mal rubs his neck and his shoulders and his chest, his arms and stomach, and she wraps him in half a hug to get at his back and she told him not to speak so he won’t but he can only bite his tongue so hard before his mouth starts filling with blood. Mal and Jay and Evie will be upset with him if he does that, but the urge to ask what the hell is going on is almost overpowering.

He keeps his eyes closed, so he doesn’t see Mal lower herself to her knees, but he can feel the heat of her body as it moves, and the softness of the towel against his legs, and he gasps, eyes flying open to stare down at her with his mouth hanging open in shock. Mal is kneeling before him, her proud head bowed, drying his feet. It takes everything in him not to tear himself away. What the hell is this? It’s wrong, she shouldn’t kneel to him. She shouldn’t kneel to _anyone_.

“Mal?”

“Shh.”

She didn’t have to shush him, he realized his slip up as soon as her name passed his lips. He raises a hand to his mouth to bite his fingers, trying to stop himself from apologizing. He already disobeyed her once, he shouldn’t do it again just to draw attention to it. Or maybe he should, because then Mal would get angry and put him in his place where he belongs and he could be good for her again, could be obedient and useful. The world would go back to making sense, and Carlos wouldn’t be left feeling like he’s standing on the edge of a cliff with Mal on her knees in front of him.

Eventually he’s dry all over, and Mal stands up, and Carlos can almost breathe again. But she only turns away to toss the towel into the hamper before her hands are on his elbows again. Carlos goes where she leads him, walking backwards and staring at her in open confusion, hoping she’ll deign to tell him what she’s doing. She just looks at him with her bright green eyes, calm and serene.

The backs of his knees hit something soft, and Carlos stumbles back before he realizes it’s the chair for the desk on his side of the room. Mal leans over him for a second, sorrounding him with the scent of her. When she stands back up she’s holding a pile of clothes he hadn’t noticed. It’s obvious just from the colors who they belong to, and the lost, slightly sick feeling in Carlos’s stomach doubles. 

This time, when Mal drops the pile to the floor and kneels again, Carlos can’t stop the wordless, incoherent sound he makes at the sight, everything in him revolting at the image of proud, powerful Mal on her knees. She only shushes him again, pulling a pair of his boxers out of the pile, and slips them over his feet like the very idea of her drying him off and dressing him isn’t the most insane, awful thought anyone has ever had. 

Too shocked to do anything else, Carlos rolls his hips up, letting her tuck him into his underwear. He tries to settle back down, to be quiet and let her do whatever it is she's doing, to _not_ fuck something up for once, but she pulls his softest pair of sleeping pants out of the pile and starts to slip them over his feet and something in him _breaks._

“Stop,” Carlos sobs, grip white-knuckled on the arms of the chair to keep himself from reaching out. “Mal, _stop_ , please I’m sorry I shouldn’t disobey you but what-- what are you--?”

Mal only looks at him calmly, gently lifting one of his feet to ease it through his pant leg, and he lets her because he’s already talking back and demanding answers out of her, he can’t even imagine making his disobedience worse right now. “Shh,” Mal says again, and only that, just “shh,” like she isn’t on her knees and touching him and tending to him and making him comfortable and being so gentle and Carlos thinks he’s about to shake apart. None of this makes any _sense_.

“I’m sorry,” He says again, half a sob. Mal pulls his pants up for him the rest of the way.

“It’s okay,” She whispers. “It’s okay.”

She’s urging his arms up over his head to get his shirt on him when what's left of him breaks, pulling out of her grip, curling in on himself and away from her. It’s too much. All of this, every part of this has been too much, he can’t _breathe._ “Don’t, Mal don’t, please, I’m sorry, I’m worthless, you shouldn’t--!”

He’s crying too hard to make proper words and even if he could, what the hell is he saying? He should _stop_ , right now. Who the hell does he think he is, to argue with Mal? He’s been nothing but disobedient all night, even when he was trying his hardest to behave for her, what is wrong with him? But his mouth keeps moving and the words keep pouring out, half-incoherent as they are.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I don’t have the right to tell you what to do I’m sorry for talking back, I’m sorry, but you _shouldn’t_. I try so hard to be useful to you but I’m nothing, I’m a burden, I’m sorry, I’m only a grunt and I don’t get to say no to you, but you’re too good to me, you put up with so much, you keep me safe and I’m the most pathetic excuse for a minion ever and you shouldn’t be--”

It isn’t Mal’s arms that cut off his pathetic, incoherent rambling, curling gently around him and pulling him into her chest. It’s her purr, rumbling between her ribs, soft and inhuman and familiar. Mal presses his ear against her sternum so he can hear her better, and he goes quiet with a gulp and a gasp, falling still against her.

“You belong to me, Carlos,” Mal says, so quiet and deep around her dragon purr. “I own you. You’re mine.” 

Carlos nods against her instinctively, because yes, that’s true, he’s hers, he worked so hard to earn his place under her and he’d been so proud, but that pride has gone sour and rotten. He’s no good, he’s useless. She should throw him away like scrap.

“You belong to me,” She says again, as if she could hear his thoughts. “I don’t waste my time with people who aren’t worthy of me. You’re brilliant and deadly and capable, and you belong to me. Every inch of you, every breath you take, every idea in that gleaming beartrap of a brain. It’s all _mine_.” Mal ducks her head, noses at his damp hair, pets his neck and shoulders. “You are not worthless, Carlos. You’re one of my most prized possessions. You and Evie and Jay, you’re the most priceless jewels in my hoard. You’re not a minion, you’re a _treasure_. It’s my job to take care of you.”

**Author's Note:**

> So, that was it! Some Carlos whump, and some exploration of Isle culture around relationships. I figure kids raised as if Minions and Villains were a social class would have some pretty skewed power dynamics in place, even with people they like.
> 
> The idea is that the first scene takes place on the limo ride to Auradon -- Cruella got in a pretty nasty farewell, and Carlos isn't in great shape as a result of it.
> 
> The second scene I see as being after some kind of gathering with lots of heroes and royals. Maybe right before D2? Something goes wrong, it's Carlos's fault somehow (or maybe Roger and Anita's faults?) and the whole squad ends up dealing with the fallout.
> 
> Idk if that Mal/Carlos tag is accurate??? I'm not sure if this is shippy or just codependant cause child abuse and a skewed power imbalance. Could go either way I guess.
> 
> What did you guys think? What vibes/ideas did you get from reading these? If I were to try and write a full fic about this scenario, what else would you want to see? How would you want it to play out?
> 
> Alternately, if you think this crowdsourcing is a bad idea and I should just quietly sit on my pile of unfinished plotless wips like some kind of writing dragon, lemme know that too so I don't waste my time posted like eighteen more of these lmao


End file.
